This challenge fight would be different than any other Arm challenge fight I had ever been in, or witnessed, or even heard of. I messed up my presentation on purpose. Haggerty had beat me in part, last time, by knowing my every move before I made it. That bit of Arm idiocy wouldn’t ever happen again. Not after this fight.
The beat of the music pounded around us, screaming something about shouting and mountains and pictures of home. The machinery clattered and banged as Haggerty’s people took no notice of us.
“Shit,” Haggerty said, getting down in a crouch. I didn’t charge. I walked toward her, vaguely emulating the stagger of a juice zombie and radiating fear. I felt the challenge anger and the overwhelming confidence necessary to challenge an Arm superior, but I hid them inside. She didn’t think I set the psychology of the challenge, but I did. I just didn’t do so verbally.
I had actually practiced, in front of a mirror, letting drool escape the right corner of my mouth and dribble down my chin as I walked. Along with the drool came a stutter in my step, a twitch in my left hand, and a fixation of my eyes on an imaginary invisible person stalking up behind Amy. To her right, one of her people drove an Aston Martin into the shop, got out of the vehicle, and lovingly rubbed the hood with a terry cloth.
“I know you’re in there, somewhere, and I’ll make sure you get fixed, afterwards.” Her soft supportive words hid a Haggerty temper tantrum, a volcano of pissed Arm, best translated into the English language as ‘you let something stupid grab you and now I’m going to need to waste my precious time and beat the crap out of you to fix you, and I don’t care in the slightest if I beat you extra hard this time, you stupid cunt’.
I hissed and flared my nose, but I still didn’t charge. I mock-stumbled over a crack in the floor and flashed into what should have been a metasense invisibility, save for the fact I didn’t succeed. On purpose. I fixed my non-seeing eyes on the man polishing the Aston Martin’s hood and edged toward a stalk.
By fooling Haggerty, my psychological presentation proved she wasn’t my superior. Or would, as soon as I stopped fooling around.
“Baaaasssss,” I said. My voice emulated Florence Rayburn. The song lyrics referenced a ‘black footed crow’, which I couldn’t believe was completely random. “You’re going to diiiiiie.”
Haggerty took a step to the left and tuned her predator to sight and metasense invisibility. She took a step to the right and one back. “Flo?”
This was rich with irony, better than I had hoped. I hadn’t counted on Haggerty getting this confused, even though each of us three speed oriented Arms – Rayburn, Bartlett and myself – could, with extensive work, masquerade as either of the others. I didn’t wear a Rayburn disguise or show anything of Rayburn other than with my voice. Haggerty took my weak-ass bait anyway. I let my right hand shake more vigorously and continued my faux stalk on the Aston Martin man.
I had planned to switch over to a Webberly growl and bark about Haggerty taking New York from her for the last time. Instead, I changed plans mid-rant. “I’m tired of doing my work with my thoughts drowned out by your patients’ screaming!” More Rayburn.
I glanced down at the floor and spotted a small oil stain. I took a handkerchief out of my pants pocket and wiped the oil stain off the floor, chortling as I did so. An out-of-place semi-truck rumbled by on the street outside, and I took fate’s hint and momentarily flashed a fake ‘fear of Hunters’ sign even Haggerty would be able to read.
If Haggerty charged me now she would mess up my chance of victory by a sizeable amount, and perhaps force me to make this a standard Arm challenge, despite all my preparations. My work with Webberly gave me an estimate of the time I needed, roughly seven seconds, to use the Affinity process to tune my metasense to Haggerty.
Theory said an Affinity link would make Haggerty’s predator-based illusions harder for me to beat. Correct in theory if you discounted an Arm’s ability to burn juice, which changed everything. My metasense was screwy to begin with, and none of the other Arms, save the late Arm Svensen, who had shared many of my metasense quirks, needed to regularly burn a dribble of juice into her metasense to make it work Arm-normal. None of the other surviving Arms knew much about my advanced metasense tricks, and I didn’t advertise. I could do a lot with juice burned into my metasense, such as see and metasense the invisible. Haggerty was too good at her invisibility trick for an unaided burn to work, though. Thus the need for an Affinity link.
Haggerty sidled over to a work area and picked up a tire iron and a heavy hubcap. Screwy, yes, but Haggerty prided herself in her use of ad hoc weaponry and her ability to fight with any imaginable weapon. I couldn’t pick her up with my metasense, just my ears. As long as she didn’t charge yet…
She hesitated long enough for my Affinity tuning to finish. I started a slow burn into my metasense, one I knew would be too small for Haggerty to register. She appeared now as a dim metasense shadow, but only when she moved, and only the parts of her body that moved. Not sufficient for combat use, but good enough for now.
“I saw what you did to Hancock,” I said, continuing my Rayburn portrayal. “The pain touch trick won’t work on me, and I refuse to let you get me alone to use your damned juice amplified chemical injections. What you’re doing isn’t Arm, bitch, and you’re going to pay.”
Haggerty continued to hesitate, attempting to figure out if I was Rayburn in disguise or a mind-broken Hancock. Amy wore her formal combat gear – black leather from neck to toe, and her characteristic black bomber jacket, hurriedly tossed on when I appeared in her metasense. The outfit’s design was one of Terry Bishop’s, an Inferno normal and fashion designer, the one who made my current combat boots and designed the evening gowns I wore when I got involved in normal Chicago politics. Haggerty’s combat gear was half way between motorcycle mama and demon from hell, especially when she wore her leather mask, and her outfit was 99.5% of the way to the line that marked Keaton’s rule about No Arms Wear Costumes Or I’ll Hunt Them Down, Painfully. Keaton didn’t appreciate Haggerty’s non-costume costume any more than she appreciated Sibrian’s, and she heisted Haggerty’s Hogs as often as she took Mary’s katanas.
Me, I was a master of disguises, and altered my appearance to suit the situation. Of all the things Keaton had punished me for over the years, the non-costume costume vice hadn’t been one of them.
I screamed and charged a faux charge to the left of Haggerty, far from where she stood and of course not at the Aston Martin guy. I stopped after my three step charge at what I vaguely remembered being a tire-balancing machine and swung my fists at the air. “You’ll never take me, never! I’ll prove it, I will, and you’ll never be able to get to Ma’am Keaton again!”
My comment, implicating Bass in Keaton’s psychotic break, the one resulting in Svensen’s death, froze Haggerty in place and nearly drove her into an analysis fugue. This line wasn’t ad lib, but part of my original plan to cycle back to Rayburn’s voice at the end of my psychological preparations, and to use this as an arrow of doubt about the importance of Amy’s push the Cause project. All based on Hank’s unproven guess. Amy wavered, wavered, wavered…and didn’t charge.
I wanted her to charge, finished now with my psychological prep. Especially since I swore something else stalked me, a metasense flicker to my left rear. Was this Midgard, Haggerty’s Crow companion? I carried several of Gilgamesh’s golf bombs with me, set up for that contingency, but I didn’t use them yet. The flicker didn’t feel like a Crow, just something unnatural I picked up with my metasense in its current unnatural attunement.
Across the room, a worker removed the needle from the record with a screech half way through a repeated ‘pictures of home’ reference – Lever, a woman Transform in Haggerty’s employ. I must have let out too much of the predator when I accused Bass. Understandable, and it would have happened far sooner for any other Arm but Haggerty or me. We both routinely used our predators to be unnoticed. Haggerty was better at this than I was, and I was excellent. She a
ctually attended FBI planning meetings dedicated to hunting her down, in person and totally invisible. The rest of the shop crew began to scurry away, toward their preset hiding places, likely led by Lever. The EFCR equivalent of the pissed Arm drill, though I doubted they knew it by the name my people used.
Prompted by the movement of her people, Haggerty charged.
I pretended I didn’t notice and kept myself slack jawed and wild-eyed, focused on the passing traffic and a moth scared up by Haggerty’s fleeing people. I didn’t move until she was three paces away, her tire iron and hubcap ready to be used as a battle axe and buckler in an attempt to knock me into blessed oblivion.
An Instant of Icepick Pain
“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” – George S. Patton
Gail Rickenbach: December 5, 1972
“I cannot take sides in this fight,” the Madonna signed.
“Nor can I,” Thomas the Dreamer signed.
The Lieutenant shook her head. Her Dreaming appearance was abnormal; she appeared to have been tortured and flayed. “I’m too weak,” she signed. The Lieutenant carried a nearly leafless fig tree in a pot with her, guarding it with love and tangible protectiveness, and Gail recognized the fig tree as the non-interactive dreaming form of Tonya. “I am interested in how you were able to call us in.” For that is what Gail had done: summon people to her in the Dreaming, in her place of power within her Dreaming garden, the rhododendron vale. Well, ‘summoning’ was what she thought she did. She wasn’t sure how her summoning appeared to the ones she summoned.
“Tricks,” Gail said, catching a twinkle in the Madonna’s eye, the person who taught her this trick. Gail wasn’t going to show any of her tricks to someone unwilling to go with her to locate Patterson and kick her out of Carol’s mind.
Several of her other Dreaming friends had already fled. “I will go in with you, but only as backup,” Rumor said. The Crow couldn’t sign, in as much as he appeared as the sound of bells in the Dreaming. He talked just fine, though. “I too have tricks, but the time isn’t right for me to reveal them to the White Witch.”
Polaris, as usual appearing as a faux astronomer with a spyglass in his hand and dressed in a black suit embroidered with silver stars, shrugged. “If the most gracious Rumor is going to back us up, then I can’t escape the honor of accompanying you,” Polaris signed. “Whether you succeed or not, this does sound like a good show. However, because of your naiveté, you likely don’t realize that the White Witch is capable of appearing in multiple places simultaneously in the Dreaming. You may need to expend more of your trick than you want.”
Gail shrugged. She turned to the Singer, the Dreaming form of Mary Sibrian. “You know by my teachings what is at stake,” the Singer signed, which to Gail appeared to be guitar strumming. Gail remembered Sibrian’s lesson with the prey Transform they had hunted down: life or death, each with different risks and moral costs. “I will fight at your side.”
To Gail’s surprise, the Madonna’s bear companion sauntered up to between Gail, Polaris, and the Singer. The bear had never done anything so bold before; this close, Gail realized the bear wasn’t misshapen, but symmetrically altered from the way a normal bear would appear. As always, she couldn’t tell what the exact differences were, as they varied from viewing to viewing, and from moment to moment. Tonight the bear appeared to be a polar bear with an oversized head and racing stripes. The bear exhaled, and snow appeared at her feet. Gail smiled, pleased to see someone else willing to show some of her tricks. The bear drew a crude picture of the White Witch in the snow with her right paw, then raised a leg and peed on the picture.
Gail blinked and took a step back. The bear was male! A Chimera! Not a Hunter or a Noble, but a pure Chimera! She had always thought the bear one of the older Monsters, one of the ones with crazy abilities.
The meaning of the bear’s actions was obvious, though. “You want in? You’re in,” Gail signed.
The bear answered with a “Huh huh huh” and stuck his nose in the crotch of Gail’s dreaming form, sniffing.
“None of that, mister,” Gail signed. She wasn’t sure the bear noticed or cared.
Gail wobbled. She had known the White Witch appeared in multiple places simultaneously in the Dreaming, but she had thought in terms of three or four, not dozens. Each hop dipped farther into Gail’s reserves, and she didn’t yet know how to tap into her household juice buffer while Dreaming. Worse, she hadn’t realized how many different Dreaming circles there were, and how many of them radiated hostility to her and her companions. Not that Gail and her four companions did anything more than appear at a distance, inspecting the Focuses in the Dreaming circles for problems and looking for signs of Carol, but still. Did nearly all established Focuses Dream? What were the long-term effects of all this Dreaming insularity?
Being part of such a tiny minority bothered Gail a lot.
In the real world, Gail felt someone crawl into her closet and curl up next to her. As she didn’t have a true place to Dream yet in the Branton, she had followed Van’s suggestion and gone over to Dr. Zielinski’s abandoned apartment to get away from the Branton’s metasense interference. His lease wasn’t up until the 15th, and the place was easy to guard.
Polaris’s voice appeared next to her Dreaming ear, a whisper. “It’s me,” Polaris said. “Don’t answer. You’re going to run yourself out of juice before we get to Carol, and she just started her challenge, so we need to hurry. I can give you access to your juice buffer while you Dream. Try not to think too hard about what’s going on, please?”
Try not to think too hard about what’s going on? Gail didn’t react to the words, but she did feel the presence of her juice buffer with her now. So, who was Polaris, anyway? Sky? The night sky clothing fit, and he was the only other Crow around, except for Gilgamesh, who might conceivably have the ability to give Gail access to her juice buffer.
If her mind wasn’t fooling her, though, the person cuddling up next to her was tiny, a child. Nothing like the rather bulky Sky. Did she have a previously unknown Crow ally?
“We’re not getting anywhere,” Gail signed. “I swear the White Witch is creating instances of herself in the Dreaming to confuse us.”
“I believe you’re correct,” Rumor said. “Several of her instances vanished after we’ve left.” Rumor was also one of those able to appear in multiple places simultaneously in the Dreaming, the only one of Gail’s companions with that ability. Gail certainly couldn’t.
“You have a trick,” Polaris signed, back to his snarky self. “I can just feel something nasty, Focusy and cheating attempting to claw its way out of your mind.” Polaris was a very interesting Crow; if she believed his words he despised Focuses, but if she looked at his Dreaming actions, and who he spoke with in the Dreaming, he was one of the Cause’s strongest supporters.
“Uh huh. I’ve, uh, been practicing with a Crow, and I’ve put together a juice pattern allowing me access to the pheromone flow from inside the Dreaming.”
“Now there’s one stupid Crow,” Polaris signed. Rumor whistled.
“Juice patterns in the Dreaming?” the Singer signed. “I didn’t know such a thing was even theoretically possible.”
“Juice use in the Dreaming is limited to purely mental tricks,” Gail signed, parroting the Madonna’s lessons. She created an illusion of the White Witch (answered by a low growl from the bear) and started the push pattern to drop her into the pheromone flow. As she did, the bear grumbled something and ended up underneath her, Gail riding him, about as comfortable as riding an oversized barrel. The bear had directly manipulated Dreaming reality, a trick she thought limited to Rumor and the Madonna of Montreal. Polaris and the Singer grabbed Gail’s arms and they all took in the overlaid Dreaming and pheromone flow. Rumor didn’t need to hang on; he just appeared in the flow in a separate instance. Using the White Witch illusion as a dowsing rod Gail readied a Dreaming pop to where the Witc
h bedeviled Carol…but the bear led her off in a different direction, splashing across Gail’s fishpond and into the great strawberry patch. “Hey!”
“I think Yogi’s figured out something,” Polaris signed. Through the strawberry patch and across to the other side, which should have been the apple tree grove, but today wasn’t. The White Witch illusion blinked, now properly functioning as a dowsing rod, and the bear followed the illusion up a small hill and down into an unfamiliar dark and gloomy valley, packed dense with snow-covered pines. In a moment they came to a potted rose bush, suffering against the cold.
“That’s Arm Webberly,” Gail signed. Arm Webberly wasn’t a Dreamer, at least not yet. “Why are we here?”
“Because the White Witch is playing tricks on us. She shoved the Commander into Webberly’s Dreaming form, and she’s hiding the Commander’s Dreaming presence among the non-Dreaming Arms,” Polaris signed. “I’ve seen this before, so get ready. I’m going to do something, um, to disrupt this.” Polaris crossed herself, muttered a prayer that didn’t sound at all Christian, and started to pick up small objects from the forest floor that had been spread around the potted rose bush. A stiletto. A frog. A brick. A hedgehog-shaped plant pot. (“That’s Arm Whetstone,” the Singer signed.) A scalpel. Finally, a wind chime.
After picking up the wind chime Polaris flew back, clothing in tatters and whimpering in pain, the Arm signifiers flying into the snow behind him. He forced himself to his feet and flipped on the lights, some form of enhanced sunlight trick. This section of Gail’s Dreaming garden lit up, revealing the White Witch masquerading as a herd of aphids crawling around on Webberly’s rose bush.
The bear charged, Gail still riding him. She hit the White Witch with a banishment, not a juice pattern but one of her force-of-will juice tricks, one she had used on the White Witch before. The Singer began to play her guitar, the notes springing at the White Witch as if they were daggers.
Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) Page 38
